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The Great Provincetown Summer - 1916
Bohemians, Radicals and Free Thinkers - Provincetown's Emergence as the Nation's First Art Colony Highlighted in Upcoming Exhibition
WHAT: The Pilgrim Monument and Provincetown Museum (PMPM) opens the 2016 season with “The Great Provincetown Summer – 1916,” commemorating the most pivotal time in the town’s history. The Summer of 1916 put Provincetown on the map as the largest and most influential art colony in the world and the birthplace of the modern American theater. Bohemians leaving the summer heat of New York City and radicals fleeing World War I in Europe joined writers, artists and others in the tiny town at the tip of Cape Cod. Provincetown was, and continues to be, a haven for artistic freedom and expression and has led to the town’s rightful designation as the “world’s longest continuous art colony.”
The exhibition captures a snapshot in time and highlights four major schools of art: Charles W. Hawthorne, founder of the Cape Cod School of Art which gave rise to the Provincetown Art Colony; E. Ambrose Webster, modernist and another founder of the Provincetown Art Colony; George Elmer Browne, landscape painter and illustrator who founded the West End School of Art; B.J.O. Nordfeldt and William and Marguerite Zorach, founders of the Modernist School of Art. Also part of the exhibit, thinkers and writers including Susan Glaspell, Emma Goldman, John Reed and Eugene O’Neill who were all drawn to Provincetown to share and inspire each other. Visitors will experience some of their influences and understand the monumental significance of the summer of 1916.
WHO: John McDonagh, Executive Director, PMPM
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Samuel Tager, Exhibition Curator
Tager, currently the assistant director and senior designer at the Harvard Museums of Science and Culture, has been designing, developing and installing museum exhibitions for 25 years. Tager is also a studio artist whose work has been shown in Boston, New York and Provincetown.
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WHEN: Exhibition opens April 1, 2016
WHERE: Pilgrim Monument and Provincetown Museum
High Pole Hill Road
Provincetown, MA
About the Pilgrim Monument and Provincetown Museum
Dedicated in 1910, the Monument commemorates the first landing of the Mayflower Pilgrims in the ‘new world’ -- in Provincetown in 1620. Here they signed the historic Mayflower Compact, the first agreement to establish a government by the people, the cornerstone of American democracy. They explored the Cape for five weeks before sailing on to Plymouth. At 252 feet, the Monument is an engineering marvel and the tallest granite tower in the United States. Visitors can climb the Monument’s 116 steps and 60 ramps at a leisurely pace and enjoy a breathtaking view of the entire Cape and visit our webcam for a live “View from the Top.” The Provincetown Museum at the base of the Monument presents engaging exhibitions of important chapters in our national heritage and the Town’s history and is a partner in Plymouth 400 in 2020, the anniversary of the Mayflower voyage and founding of the Plymouth Colony. Pilgrim Monument and Provincetown Museum is a non-profit educational, tax-exempt 501(3)(c) organization. For more information please visit pilgrim-monument.org.
Photo Credits:
· Eugene O’Neill, Eugene O’Neill, Jr., Agnes Boulton, in Provincetown, courtesy of the Sheaffer-O’Neill Collection
· Painters on a wharf in Provincetown from the Natalie Gioioso Photo Archive of the Pilgrim Monument and Provincetown Museum collection
